styleguide clarification?

[Rocco Stanzione]

On Friday 10 March 2006 11:31, Jeff Schering wrote:
> On 3/8/06, Rocco Stanzione <grasshopper at linuxkungfu.org> wrote:
> > I was playing around in the serverguide (patch pending), and I noticed
> > that in many places the author appears to have prepended a comma to every
> > single conjunction.  Something like s/([^,]) (and|or)/\1, \2/g could have
> > been used. For example:
>
> Jeez, that's a little snarky. Are you trying to imply that the author
> used a regex to put commas into his work? Typically, editors try to
> use a bit more tact when pointing out grammar and usage errors to
> authors.

Woah!  I sure didn't mean to imply that it was actually done that way - just 
that it was so consistent that it could have been done that way.  My 
apologies if I inadvertently cast unjust aspersions on the author.

> > To have <application>sshd</application> allow public key-based login
> > credentials, simply add, or modify the line:
> >
> > I can see how the series comma section of the styleguide could be
> > misinterpreted this way.  Maybe a brief clarification should be added.
>
> The example you provide is clearly not a series comma issue. The
> series comma is used in lists. The above is not a list. The comma
> after "add" above is not correct for reasons that have nothing to do
> with the series comma.

That's my point.  It looks to have been applied in an attempt to adhere to the 
series comma rule, possibly with a misunderstanding of a series.  It's really 
just a guess as to why that comma was added, but I think it's a decent guess.